15 Best Things to Do in Heilbronn (Germany)

More than 1,200 years in the making, Heilbronn on the Neckar River has a few strings to its bow. The city is Württemberg’s wine capital, and has a wine festival in September that pulls in hundreds of thousands of people. Heilbronn also has the heritage you’d expect from a former Imperial Free City, and this is waiting for you inside the Gothic St Kilian’s Church, where there’s a Late Gothic altarpiece of breathtaking beauty.

The banks of the Neckar are as picturesque as they come, especially in the green south Heilbronn around the Wertwiesenpark. And if you’re clued up on German literature, you can come to the Medieval tower where Götz von Berlichingen, the hero of Goethe’s drama was held captive.

Let’s have a look at the best things to do in Heilbronn:

1. St Kilian’s Church

Source: Karel Gallas / shutterstock

St Kilian’s Church

Heilbronn’s main historic building, St Kilian’s Church is a Gothic hall church made from Heilbronn’s sandstone.

The oldest architecture dates back the 1200s, while the bulk of the building is from the 14th and 15th centuries.

Except for the tower, as this is a little newer and was started in 1508, showing some of the first hints of a Renaissance influence north of the Alps.

Like nearly all of Heilbronn, the church was badly damaged in the war, first by an air attack and then by artillery fire.

But its valuable decorations and fittings had long been moved to safety.

The pièce de résistance is an expertly carved Late Gothic altar by Hans Seyffer dating to 1498, and measuring 11.64 metres by 7.86. It shows Mary with Child, flanked by saints in the middle panel.

The delicate reliefs on the wings depict scenes like the Crucifixion and the Death of Mary.

2. Astronomical Clock

Source: Karel Gallas / shutterstock

Astronomical Clock

On the gable of Heilbronn town hall’s old Renaissance facade is a fantastic piece of 16th-century workmanship by Isaak Habrecht who also designed the clock at Strasbourg Cathedral.

The clock has three faces: At the top, below the bell is the moon clock, displaying the phases of the moon over 30 days.

Under this is the 12-hour clock with an hour and minute hand.

At the strike of the hour a few automatons come to life: Two angels turn to each other, one with a trumpet and the other marking the toll of the bell with a sceptre.

Under these are two golden rams, and a cock that crows on the fourth, eight and twelfth hours.

And finally, the lowest of the three faces is the zodiac clock, showing the position of the sun and moon in the 12 signs of the zodiac.

3. Käthchenhaus

After gazing at the Astronomical Clock on Marktplatz you can also come around to the southwest corner of the square to appreciate this beautiful Gothic house dating to the 14th century.

At a time when all homes were being built with timbers, this edifice was built entirely of Heilbronn sandstone, and that’s one of the reasons it has made it to the 21st century.

The three-storey property has Gothic and Renaissance mullioned windows, and on the oriel (bay window) are relief portraits of the Hebrew prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea and Habakkuk from 1534. Even though it has no link to the work, the house is named after the Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist’s play Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, which helped put Heilbronn on the map in the 19th century.

4. MS Experimenta

If you come to Heilbronn before 2019, one of the city’s top attractions will be going through a renovation.

Experimenta is an interactive science centre and laboratory that opened in a former warehouse on Kraneninsel, between the Wilhelmskanal and the Neckar in 2003. Using 150 interactive exhibits, the museum dealt with topics like communication, renewable energy and transport technology.

In 2017 the centre was closed for a two-year revamp, but a lot of its activities were temporarily moved to a 100-metre-long container ship moored on the canal next to the museum building.

5. South German Railway Museum

At the former Bundesbahn locomotive depot in Heilbronn’s Böckingen district is a museum with a small fleet of locomotives and wagons, mostly from the first half of the 20th century.

There are roughly 80 exhibits to check out, among historic maintenance infrastructure like a roundhouse dating to 1893. As for the locomotives, the exceptional engine here is the Prussian P8, which is part of a line manufactured between 1908 and 1926 has been restored to full working order after serving on Romania’s railways.

The P8 is one of more than ten steam locomotives in various states of repair, along with a handful of diesel locomotives, a collection of Saxon and Prussian passenger coaches and an I-gauge model railway.

7. Haus der Stadtgeschichte

Drawing on Heilbronn’s municipal archives, the Haus der Stadtgeschichte is a neatly presented museum about the history of the city.

The attraction reopened in 2012, recording Heilbronn’s story from the High Middle Ages to the 21st century in two large rooms.

The smaller of these has a detailed 3D model of Heilbronn in 1800, in which even individual buildings can be identified.

Also here are Medieval certificates granting the city privileges, liturgical sculpture, oil portraits of famous figures, tomb effigies and an 18th-centruy porcelain collection.

The larger room covers the 19th and 20th centuries, using newspapers, everyday products, stamps and archive photography to give you a feel for life in Heilbronn during the Empire, Weimar Republic, National Socialism and the reconstruction after the war.

8. Pfühlpark

The oldest park in Heilbronn dates back to 1575 when the foundation stone for the Trappenseeschlösschen was laid.

This small palace still sits on an island on the Trappensee lake on the east side of the park, and is one of the prettiest sights in Heilbronn.

The remaining nine hectares or so were redesigned in 1934 for a horticultural exhibition.

The park is well-appointed, thanks to restoration efforts over the last couple of decades.

Kids will adore the playground, which has a giant slide on a pyramid, while on the Pießsee lake there’s a 35-metre-wide wooden deck where you can soak up the tranquillity of the lake and the rich vegetation on its banks.

11. Wertwiesenpark

Right on the Neckar, Heilbronn’s other inviting park was started in 1982 to be ready for Baden-Württemberg Landesgartenschau (State Garden Show) in 1985. People visit to amble on either bank of the river, which you can cross on a footbridge, and to have barbecues in the designated area on summer evenings.

There’s another fun playground for youngsters, a skate park for teenagers, an outdoor swimming pool and a mini-golf course.

The Wertwiesenpark also has horticultural value for its individual gardens for perennials (13,000 plants),roses, grasses and fragrances.

12. Bollwerksturm and Götzenturm

Two towers from Heilbronn’s once fearsome defensive walls have made it to the present day.

The Bollwerksturm (Bulwark Tower) dates from the Hohenstaufen dynasty in the 11th and 12th centuries and was on the northwest corner of the city wall.

It was a prison for the most heinous criminals, and the Franconian knight and poet Götz von Berlichingen, subject of Goethe’s eponymous drama (1773), did time here after being captured by the Swabian League in 1519. The Götzenturm is a little younger, from 1392 and at 30 metres tall is made from the local sandstone.

What’s funny is that the Götzenturm is named after Götz von Berlichingen and became a popular sight following Goethe’s play, even though the hero was in fact kept in the cruder-looking Bollwerksturm.